Sunday, August 24, 2008

Hiatus

I would write something, but since my accident I've done pretty much no work on D&D. I am, in fact, finding it difficult to concentrate on the subject. And so, no postings here.

I've given some thought to what I wrote about monsters, and am aware of a monumental task ahead of me; one which I'm likely to put off for a few months and then take three years to finish. That's no big deal. I have a lot of projects that take that kind of time.

Somewhere along, I began to realize that a lot of the things I wanted to do with this game were going to take extraordinary amounts of time to accomplish. Rather than thinking I would sit down for a few weeks and dash off a wilderness events/encounter table, I've worked on and off such a thing since around 2003. The maps covering my world I've been working on since 2002. The general descriptive encyclopedia of my world I began in 1998. And my trade tables I began in 1987.

Those are not, by any accounts, my only projects. I continue and fail to produce a working treasure table (though I feel I may have something by this time next year). Rewriting and reworking the classes I use (only the same old eleven from the original player's handbook), along with the spells, has been a monumental effort, never seeming to end. The combat system I use took forever to refine...it is the only thing I think is truly complete. There are mass army combat rules, the ever-frustrating seige-engine combat system and endless random generation systems that never seem to measure up.

By all accounts, D&D is, for me, broken. The game is broken. It doesn't work. At best it limps along (pretty much like me at the moment) and I tolerate and make up for its multitude of flaws by glossing over them when the critical moment arrives. This game has to be played by the seat of your pants, gentle reader...because you work and fix and design and make and the fucking thing remains broken.

Which is why I love it, I suppose.

But not at the moment. At the moment, I'm not even writing into this blog. But I'll heal and I'll pick up again, inevitably.

4 comments:

Carl
said...

I was wondering how your injury was going to affect your blogging. I'm glad to see you're still at least trying to plug away at it.

The issues you're encountering with D&D sound all-too-familiar for me. In many ways, the 3rd edition helped. I've one friend who insists that GURPS is the superior system in regards to playable realism. But, I too love D&D and have a tough time giving up the familiar archetypes of that game system and it's meta-setting.

I have tried and played other systems besides D&D, and I continue to read through the rules of systems I come across. You misunderstand--no system will solve every problem, particularly in a very complex campaign. If and when I find something in another system that solves some problem in my D&D campaign, I modify and incorporate it. I don't throw out D&D and start from scratch.

Additional Content

Began playing Dungeons and Dragons at the age of 15, thirty-eight years ago. I am a steadfast AD&D gamer, but I have made so many changes to the original system that my present model is something of a Frankenstein's monster of role-playing design. I continue to make new changes every day to my game's structure and function.

The Net has described me as a 'mad scientist of RPG blogging,' and a 'Quixotic bastard' ... and also 'the most gonzo - and the grouchiest - old school DM.'

Progress on The Fifth Man

For a period going forward, I will be rewriting the last third of the book as a second draft. I will begin recording that progress also as soon as I pick up the task again. It has been more than two weeks now and I apologize to my backers; but rest assured, I'm sorting myself out and I'll get started again soon.

Progress on the third draft, finalized (will likely be some continuity fixes) stand as follows:

June 29, 2017

Distance yesterday: 0 words

Total distance: 75,490

Chapter in progress: 17

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